Three notes being played simultaneously are referred to as a Triad. Triads are the building blocks of Chords. The most common triads in popular music are the major triad and the minor triad. THE MAJOR TRIAD Major triads are derived from the major scale, and are the basis of the major chord. As an example, let’s look at the A major scale: The A major (or … Read More
Minor triads are derived from the minor scale, and are the basis of the minor chord. They differ from the major triad in that they have a MINOR THIRD instead of a major third, which basically means we flatten the third note (move it down one semitone or one fret). Let’s look at the natural minor scale, in the key of A: … Read More
As for major triads, we can finger common minor chord shapes based on our three-note triads by repeating some notes in the minor triad. Listen: Here’s an example of an ‘open position’ minor chord progression, with a simple melody in between the chord changes. This example is in the key of A Minor, so the melody is derived from the … Read More
These shapes can be moved up and down the fingerboard to produce a minor chord in any key. The root note will dictate what minor chord it is. Note we need to use a first finger barre again for some of these. Here is an example of a minor chord progression using barre chords. Note the reggae-style strum pattern (each … Read More
